Love Me (it's the rules)
by Lorata
Summary: Cato is a big dumb boy with big dumb hands and a big dumb brain. His parents ignore him, his teachers sigh at him, and school is hard and sitting still is hard and he's not good at anything. Except at the Centre, where he doesn't have to read or sit and the trainers give him cookies and no one yells at him for being stupid or loud or clumsy.


One day when Cato is eleven, he decides he'll be afraid of thunderstorms.

It's a great idea; he should have thought of it sooner. Lightning cracks the sky outside and thunder rolls through the air; the window frames rattle and rain lashes against the panes. It's good weather, spooky weather, and Cato is safe inside and their house is strong and won't fall down but he thinks, maybe, it might be fun to be scared. The good kind of scared, the kind that's not real, like watching a monster movie or poking at a snake with a really big stick, not the kind where they show you a special way to punch but tell you not to do it unless you mean it because the other person will die.

He wraps himself up in a blanket and shuffles through the house, shivering every time the house shakes. There's a big, loud burst of thunder when Cato reaches his parents' room, and for a second he forgets he's only pretending to be scared and bolts through the doorway.

They're asleep, which is perfect. Cato hitches up the blanket and crawls onto the bed, curls up between them and rolls himself up tight, wiggling his toes. He's safe and warm and his parents are here and the storm is outside, and Cato's just starting to drift when Dad shifts and jumps. "Cato!" he snaps, his voice hard like an axe. "What are you doing?"

Cato flinches back, but then that wakes Mom. She doesn't yell, just gives a disappointed sigh and rolls over away from him. Dad scowls. "You should be in your own bed. Why aren't you asleep?"

"I was scared of the storm," Cato says. His voice sounds small in the big room, which is getting bigger and bigger and emptier and emptier and the only thing in it is Dad's anger, which is cold and burning at the same time.

"Cato, you are not a baby," Dad says. "You're too old to be afraid of storms. You know better. Now go back to bed and go to sleep, I'm not going to tell you again."

But the thing is, Cato is _not_ a baby, but it's nothing to do with storms. He's not a baby because yesterday he held a sword longer than his arm and drove it all the way through the sand-stuffed sack so the sharp end went out the other side and the sand spilled onto the floor and kept spilling until there was no more. Babies don't know how it feels for someone's nose to crack under their fists. They don't sit in their parents' bed and know where to put their hands to stop them breathing in less than a minute.

Rage boils up inside Cato so strong that for a second he can't see because they don't get it. It's not about the storm. It's never about the storm, it's about being alone in his room and talking to his stuffed animals and telling them about his day and the bones he broke and the trainers who patted his head and told him good job because at least his stuffed animals listen to him. Except they don't listen because they're not real, they just sit there and stare at him with their glass eyes and _even that_ is better than his parents because at least his animals don't sigh and tell him to be quiet.

Cato climbs back over Dad, not caring if he gets his elbows or his knees in soft places - Dad grunts when Cato digs his foot into his ribs and Cato might have done that on purpose - and he stomps out of the room. He stomps through the house, out through the TV room and past the kitchen, and on the way back to his room he stomps by the living room, where his parents like to have guests over. There's a big cabinet in it with lots of fancy dishes, and Mom told him never to touch it because he has big hands and he doesn't know how to control himself and he'll break everything. Cato always breaks everything.

Cato stares at the cabinet, and there's something bubbling under his skin that stretches out into his fingers, and it sits behind his eyes and makes them sting. It whispers in his ear that he's no good, that he's annoying and useless and stupid, and maybe if he was better at anything then his parents would love him more, but he's not. He's dumb and he can't do anything right and his parents don't love him and they probably won't, not ever.

He doesn't remember knocking the cabinet over, doesn't remember heaving it away from the wall and pushing as hard as he can. Doesn't remember it toppling, the dishes crashing against the floor and smashing into millions of little pieces. Later he pokes at the bruise on his leg from where the cabinet hit him on the way down, but he doesn't remember getting it. He does remember Dad yelling. He remembers Mom asking him if he's crazy. He remembers laughing because Mom's hair was standing up like a wig, and her eyes were big and wide and she looked crazy herself and that was funny.

He remembers the key turning in the lock of the door to the basement.

The thunder fades, the lightning disappears into the clouds, but Cato doesn't fall back asleep and his anger doesn't go away. It sits on his shoulder all the way through the rest of the night, into the next morning at breakfast when he eats alone, right through his walk to school. At school it digs its claws in and tears little pieces of him away, and Cato sits and stares at his math paper and the numbers don't make sense and they're laughing at him, he knows they are, and his big dumb hand is too big to hold the pencil properly and the teacher asks him a question and he doesn't understand and Mickey Carter behind him snickers about big dumb monkeys -

Mickey isn't laughing when they pull Cato off him, fists clenched and knuckles aching and smeared with red. Cato spits and struggles as the teachers get him by the arms and drag him away, and he flings words at Mickey like the big kids at the Centre taught him. It's good television if you can find something the other person said and throw it back at their face, they told him, and he won't officially learn that until he's older but it's never a bad idea to start now. And so Cato yells things like "who's the dumb monkey now" and it's good, because the anger fills him up like a balloon until he thinks he could float away on it, and for a while, at least, he doesn't feel so empty.

At least until he's sitting in the principal's office in the hard plastic chair, kicking at the legs with his sneakers (_thump-thump, thump-thump_), and she looks at him like mom looks at him, with her eyes big and her eyebrows bunched together and her mouth upside-down. "Cato, I'm disappointed in you," she says, and that punctures the balloon and the anger leeches out and now he's just empty again, empty and itchy and confused. "You should know better than that. You used to be such a good boy."

She means before the Centre. When he went to the Centre for testing, when he was six, they asked him if he ever hit anyone, if he ever started fights, and Cato had laughed, because why bother? If someone didn't like him, who cared, he had lots of friends. Later the Centre taught him that was wrong.

Cato shrugs. The principal sighs again. "Why did you hit him?"

Grownups are always saying things like that, and Cato still doesn't know what they want him to say. The first pricking of resentment starts in his spine. "He called me dumb."

"And?"

He squirms. The chair isn't very comfy. He's too big for it, big and dumb and clumsy, and he can't hold pencils properly but he can swing a sword, and his life is a puzzle in a box all shaken up and some of the pieces fell out but he doesn't know which ones. Cato stares at the loops of cord around his wrist and wonders, if he flashed his Centre bracelet at her, she would stop asking questions. Sometimes it works when the teachers ask him about math.

"Cato, it wasn't nice of Mickey to call you dumb, but that doesn't mean you should have hit him."

"Because he's right," Cato finishes the sentence dully and kicks the chair legs again. _Thump-thump, thump-thump_. "I am dumb."

"You're not dumb," the principal says in a sharp voice, forgetting all about Mickey. "I don't want to hear you say that."

Cato doesn't try to argue, because grownups don't like kids who are dumb or who can't sit still or who couldn't read until they were eight but just knew how to fake it so well the teachers didn't even figure it out. Back when he was really little he had a teacher who used to read out loud to him, and Cato has a good memory and so he did pretty good in school that year. But then Grandpa found out and he called the school and said Cato was going to be in the Hunger Games so don't waste their time, and after that he's never done too well with learning.

Grownups wouldn't like him if they knew the real him, the one they keep telling him he's not. He's not dumb, they say. He's not clumsy. He's not unwanted. Except Cato is all of these things and he knows it - and he thinks they might know it too, they just don't want to think about it - but he has to pretend. They like him as long as he pretends and doesn't mess up and make them think about the real him, but unfortunately he messes up more than he should.

Cato really wants grownups to like him, and so he just nods when the principal repeats it. "Yeah," he says. "Can I go back to class now?"

"Yes, if you promise not to hit anyone anymore," she says, and Cato nods again because that's what you do. "Save that for the Centre."

They say that a lot, too, like Cato should be cut into pieces, like he should be one person at the Centre and one person at school and invisible at home. The Centre says it doesn't matter because in two years there won't be School Cato or Home Cato anymore, only Centre Cato, but that doesn't help him _now_.

He's not sure if Centre Cato is allowed to be afraid of thunderstorms. Probably not.

Cato just says 'yeah' again, and after a short silence she sends him back to class. Mrs. Marchand doesn't try to make him answer any questions, which is kind of too bad because it's history class now, and Cato likes history. It's easier to remember people and the stuff they do than numbers, but oh well. He sits through it until two, when the Program kids get released from class to go to the Centre, and that's the best time of the day because they all walk together and laugh, jostling and pushing each other into puddles and wrestling in the grass.

It's better once he's at the Centre. The trainer tells him to run and so he runs, and he climbs the rope and swings the sword and wins the wrestling match, and they give him cookies and tell him he's a good boy. The Centre is good because it's clear what they want him to do, and if he does it right he gets a prize. It's easy to understand, and if sometimes they ask Cato to do things he doesn't want to do - get angry, break a bone, make someone cry - it's easier because the trainers love him if he does.

Cato could do a lot of things he doesn't want to, he thinks, if it will make them love him.

The only problem is that it doesn't last; the Program is like a set of stairs that keeps going up and up and up forever, and you're never allowed to stop climbing. As soon as Cato finds something that makes the trainers happy, he gets maybe a week to do it and get rewarded for it before it's not good enough. If he runs two miles, next week he has to run three. If he gets into a fight and punches somebody, next week he has to fracture their cheekbone.

One time he complains to a trainer after the longest run he's ever done; he's sprawled out on the grass, and he's allowed to say he doesn't want to get up once before he gets in trouble so it's not a problem yet. "When can I stop?" he asks her, and Cato likes this trainer because she doesn't usually yell at him. "I'm good, you know I'm good. When will everybody believe me?"

"Cato, it's not about being good," she tells him, and Cato frowns. He digs his fingers into the grass and tears up a handful; he throws the blades up, hoping the wind will carry them away, but the air is dead today and they fall to the ground in a clump of dirt. "It's about excelling, and the difference is that when you excel you always have to improve. You can't just find 'good enough' and stop there. That's what makes one person good and another person great."

Cato sits up. The ground is chill beneath his hands; the snow only melted a few weeks ago. "And you think I could be great?"

"I do," she says. "But not the way you are right now. You're nearing the middle of the pack. You have to stand out."

Cato's stomach goes cold. That means he's close to getting a blue strand for the next addition to his bracelet, and if he gets a blue strand that means he won't be the best and he'll be in danger of getting cut next time. And if he gets cut then there will be nothing, no one to tell him what to do, no one to love him and praise him and tell him he's a good boy. It will just be home and silence and closed doors and his grandfather's disappointment and no one loving him ever ever again.

"What should I do?" Cato demands, the fear pressing against the inside of his ribs and pushing out. "What do they want to see?"

"They want to see someone who's a fierce competitor," she says. "Someone who doesn't need to be told what to do. You're a good candidate, Cato, or you wouldn't be here. But you only do the minimum, never more. You have to go above and beyond."

"Above and beyond," Cato says, and he doesn't like that answer as much as he likes specific things like climb that rope or destroy that target or fight that boy, but okay. "Can I get a hint?"

The trainer laughs. "All right, but this is your last one, okay? You're too friendly. You fight the others because we tell you to, but you don't fight enough on your own. You don't win the Hunger Games by making friends, and you won't graduate that way, either. You need to stop thinking about the other trainees as your friends and start thinking of them as competition, because that's how they see you. Is that good enough?"

"Yes ma'am," Cato says, and she tells him the time to be lazy is over and he should run back inside.

Excellent. He can do excellent. Grandpa always tells Cato he's a cut above the others; it can't be that hard to prove it. And so, after that, Cato adds ten to everything he does - ten extra pushups, ten extra minutes, laps, suicides, perforated sand bags, whatever. Every time Cato adds ten, the next time the trainers start him at the previous total, so by the end of a month Cato can barely move when he goes home at night. He's silent at dinner - it's usually just him anyway, Mom and Dad like to stay out late - and so he eats whatever's in the fridge, cold, and collapses onto his bed.

The trainers tell him he's doing a good job again. His parents don't say anything, and that means Cato's doing a good job of staying out of their hair; at school the teachers tell him they're glad he's avoiding trouble, but it's mostly that Cato doesn't have the energy to get mad anymore. After running running running for hours at the Centre, and coming home to run some more, by the time he's at school Cato mostly just wants to sleep. If anyone does try to start a fight at school he's too tired to react, and he saves up the anger and lets it out where the trainers can see it.

That summer there's a new black band around his wrist, and last week Cato sent a boy to the hospital and he'll never walk again and the trainers gave him a whole piece of giant fudge cake all to himself in front of everyone. It's his first year eligible for the Reaping, and that means Cato takes the train up to the central point and stands in a group with all the other kids with bracelets on their wrists.

He looks up at the stage at the big blond boy and the dark, pretty girl who stare out at the crowd with hard-edged, nasty smiles and one day Cato will be one of them. One day he'll win the Games and everything will make sense. He'll stand on that stage and smile and everyone will smile back and no one will ever call him stupid or lock him in his room ever again. And if they try he'll call the Capitol and President Snow will send a whole squad of Peacekeepers to tell them why they're not allowed to be mean to Cato because he's a Victor, so there.

When you win the Hunger Games, the entire country has to love you. It's the rules.


End file.
